Cleopatras Childrens Chromosomes:

A Halachic Biological Debate

In narrating the birth of the tribes, the Torah mentions as
an afterthought to the birth of Leahs sons, And
afterwards [Leah] gave birth to a daughter, and she named
her Dina (Genesis 30:21). The Talmud Bavli (Brachot 60a)
picks up on this strange language and relates the following
midrash. Rachel and Leah were each destined to have a baby
of the other gender - Leah a boy and Rachel a girl. After
analyzing and estimating the number of children each wife
of Yaakov would have, Leah prayed that she should give
birth to a girl, so that her sister should not have fewer sons
than a maidservant. Based on this occurrence, the midrash
reflects the fact that it is halachically permissible for parents
to pray for a desired sex of their child for 40 days after
conception [1]. However, this begs the question- where
does this timeframe come from?
Fetal development has been a topic of interest that has
been studied by various cultures. The Talmud Bavli (Nida
30b) relates the story of Cleopatra VII and her quest to
establish when the sexual development of a fetus begins.
The Talmud recounts that she condemned rebellious
maidservants to death, but only followed through with the
punishment 41 days after they had cohabitated with a man.
After the maidservants death, Cleopatra performed
autopsies and discovered one maidservant who was
pregnant with a boy, and another who was pregnant with a
girl. From this experiment, she proved that males and
females develop along the same timespan in utero.
Rabbi Yishmael, a third generation tana, rejects the
conclusion of Cleopatra, stating I bring proof from the
Torah, and you disprove me from imbeciles?(Nida 30b).
Rabbi Yishmael himself is of the opinion that a male baby
is fully developed by 40 days, and a female by 80 days. As
Shlomo HaMelech aptly said, There is nothing new under
the sun (Kohelet 1:9), which in this case proves to be true,
since science gives proof to Rabbi Yishmaels opinion.
Biologically, the key difference between males and females
is due to the 23rd pair of chromosomes. In females, each of
the two sex chromosomes looks like the letter X, and
therefore is called an X chromosome. In males however,
there is only one X chromosome; the other chromosome
has the appearance of a Y. Fittingly, it is called a Y
chromosome. Each child gets one chromosome from each
parent. The mother passes one X chromosome to her
offspring through her egg, and the father will transmit
either an X or a Y chromosome in his sperm. The joining
of the two cells creates the zygote, which will either have
its 23rd pair of chromosomes as XX or XY. Remarkably,
aberrations on this will still follow the same distinct
pattern. If a zygote carries XXY, it will develop into a male,
and if it carries XO, it will develop into a female [2]. The
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By Merav
Gold

lack of variability in allosomes leads us to wonder how it is

possible that male and female fetuses develop at different
rates. Furthermore, if the allosomes are determined at
conception, how can parents pray for the sex of his baby at
any time after conception?
The development of gonads in a fetus, like most events
that occur in humans, is predicated on the translation of
the genetic code into proteins. In this case, the gene of
interest is the SRY gene, the sex-determining region of the
Y chromosome which is located on the Y chromosome.
When SRY is activated, it encodes for testis-determining
factor (TDF), the transcription factor that initiates the
development of male gonads. Interestingly, SRY
expression is first detected in a fetus at 41 days, and is
detectable until day 52 of the pregnancy [3]. This
phenomenon would explain Rabbi Yishmaels statement.
While he could not have known about SRY expression, his
calculations that a male is developed after 40 days are not
completely off target. But, he is inaccurate in regard to his
statement that male development is finished after 40 days;
modern science reveals that it starts after day 40. The
halacha allowing a parent to pray for the sex of the child
until day 40 is logical regardless of whether sexual
development of the fetus starts or ends by day 40. By that
time, even though the sex was already determined based on
which allosome was present in the sperm, the actual
physical development of the childs sex is fully underway. It
is after that point that halacha deems it impermissible to ask
God for a miracle and switch the sex of the child, similar
to the miracle performed for Leah and Rachel.
Yet, the debate between Cleopatra and Rabbi Yishmael is
not yet resolved. The real dispute between Cleopatra and
Rabbi Yishmael is not about male development, which
they both agree is completed after 40 days, but rather, it
concerns female development. Cleopatra claims that
females develop on the same timeline as males and are also
sexually developed by 40 days. Rabbi Yishmael, however,
uses the amount of time the Torah commands a woman to
keep the laws of tumah and tahara after the birth of the baby
to calculate that female development is completed after 80
days of fetal development.
As far as we know, maleness is determined by the
expression of SRY, but what about femaleness? Is it just
the lack of maleness, or are other genes transcribed and
other events occurring in the forming female? Rabbi
Yishmael does not seem to equate female development
with the lack of male development, rather it is its own
occurrence that happens to occur later in the pregnancy
[1]. Rabbi Yishmael is, in fact, correct in this assessment.
Biologically speaking, the basic developmental pathway of
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gonads from stem cells would end in the development of

ovaries [3]. It is only the transcription of SRY that changes
the developmental pathway to develop the male urogenital
system.
Physically, the absence of maleness would mean that if
SRY is not expressed by day 41 the zygote will immediately
begin developing a female urogenital system. If Cleopatra
were to emerge from the debate victorious, femaleness
would be the absence of maleness. However, femaleness is
not just the absence of maleness. The ability to identify the
development of the female urogenital system is not
immediate. It occurs during the 12th week, or about 80 days
of fetal development [3]. This occurs 30-days after SRY
stops expressing, proving that, in fact, females and males
do not develop at the same time, and Rabbi Yishmael is the
victor.
An additional proof against Cleopatra causes Rabbi
Yishmael to say and you bring me proof from the
imbiciles?! The harshness of his answer comes not from
the fact that his contemporaries rejected his math, but it
comes from the proof of Cleopatra herself. She claimed to
have autopsied two women who conceived a child at the

same time and they each carried one of each gender. There
is a glaring error in this scientific experiment: At day 40 the
gonads are not developed to look different from each
other. SRY is only beginning to be expressed at day 40.
Prior to this, only undifferentiated gonads are found, along
with sets of both female and male internal duct systems.
Regardless of the angle the fetus is looked at, it is
impossible to identify its sex at such a young age of
development [4]. Truly, Rabbi Yishmael emerges from the
debate, victorious in his knowledge of human fetal
development.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents for supporting me in my
pursuit of learning both Torah and Madda. I would like to
thank Dr. Babich for providing me with most of the
articles sourced in this paper, and for being a constant
source of inspiration to find the true junction of Torah
UMadda. I would also like to thank Rabbi Dr. Richard
Weiss for taking the time to read over this article, and his
guidance in both Torah and Madda content of the article.

References
[1] Poltorak, L. (2009). On the Embryological Foresight
of the Talmud. BOr HaTorah 19:19-24
[2] Cummings, M.R., 2011, Human Heredity, 9th edition,
Brooks/Cole, Belmont, CA

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[3] Schoenwolf, G.C, and Larsen, W.J. (2009).

Development of the Urogenital System in Larsens
Human Embryology. 4th Edition. Churchill
Livingstone, New York, pp 503-515
https://www.innerbaia.com/Embryo/hum_emb.htm
(Retrieved October 14, 2015)
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